Star Trek faced one new major release - Angels & Demons - in its second weekend and dropped 42.8% to #2. STiD faced three major new releases. It held up well. Its overall box office gross is likely to fall short of Paramount's pre-release hopes and expectations, but it'll still be profitable, still be one of their top franchises and still lead to a sequel, perhaps with the budget trimmed back some.

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BTW, does anyone think the movie will come even close to $500 million at this point as many predicted?

According to those who have explained box office to me, a 46% drop is actually a very good hold. A lot of "big" films drop by well over 50%.

And I'm not overly worried about the Smith and son movie...mainly due to the "and son" part of it. Every time I have seen this trailer in the theatre it elicited laughs/"that looks boring"/"I've seen this movie before"/and finally "ugh. His son. AGAIN? Ugh" responses.

And I'm not overly worried about the Smith and son movie...mainly due to the "and son" part of it. Every time I have seen this trailer in the theatre it elicited laughs/"that looks boring"/"I've seen this movie before"/and finally "ugh. His son. AGAIN? Ugh" responses.

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The only sad part about that IMO is this film is probably the last big budget hurrah for M Night Shyamalan. Too bad really. The Sixth Sense& Signs was such great flicks.

BTW, does anyone think the movie will come even close to $500 million at this point as many predicted?

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I think it'll end up with $230-240 million domestic. Foreign numbers are harder to predict since it hasn't been released in quite a lot of territories yet. My guess is it'll end up somewhere between $430 million and $450 million worldwide, but it could go higher if it performs well in its upcoming international releases.

The only sad part about that IMO is this film is probably the last big budget hurrah for M Night Shyamalan. Too bad really. The Sixth Sense& Signs was such great flicks.

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The Sixth Sense was one of the great films of all time.

Signs was one of the funniest movies I've ever seen, absolutely hilarious. Unfortunately I think Shyamalan was attempting to be serious. Sooooo . . . in that case . . . maybe this being his final big budget flop isn't such a bad thing after all. Its a shame he will be relegated to making low budget flops henceforth.

According to posters in China on the BoxOffice.com forum STiD has opened to an estimated $3.2 million there (that's just for its opening day). That's 60% of G.I. Joe 2's opening day. If STiD ended up with a gross in China 60% of G.I. Joe 2's it would result in a $30-35 million take. Star Trek made $8.5 million in China.

Plus I look at STiD's #3 spot like this. It was only just barely #3. Hangover III did a mere 4 million more in business which in big movie release terms means that they were more or less tied.

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Considering that STID opened at a huge number of IMAX locations and that it was in 3-D at a higher ticket price than the previous film + that Paramount make a big effort to promote and even release the film overseas first - coupled with the fact that they hired an international film star, Cumberbatch and it didn't, 'hit it out of the park,' with over $100 million opening weekend - I'd wager that the beancounters at Paramount are disappointed.

But, go right ahead an put the happy face on the numbers.

We shall see.

As an aside, I wonder if Paramount is worried about their next big release in June, World War Z, which they've also put a subsantial financial stake into?

Paramount didn't distribute Iron Man 3. When Disney acquired Marvel they bought out Paramount's distribution deal with Marvel. Paramount is getting a cut of Iron Man 3's box office, as they did with The Avengers, as a result of that buyout, but most of the money is flowing to Disney/Marvel.

Plus I look at STiD's #3 spot like this. It was only just barely #3. Hangover III did a mere 4 million more in business which in big movie release terms means that they were more or less tied.

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Considering that STID opened at a huge number of IMAX locations and that it was in 3-D at a higher ticket price than the previous film + that Paramount make a big effort to promote and even release the film overseas first - coupled with the fact that they hired an international film star, Cumberbatch and it didn't, 'hit it out of the park,' with over $100 million opening weekend - I'd wager that the beancounters at Paramount are disappointed.

But, go right ahead an put the happy face on the numbers.

We shall see.

As an aside, I wonder if Paramount is worried about their next big release in June, World War Z, which they've also put a subsantial financial stake into?

No doubt Paramount will do more research into why this film didn't hit the numbers they wanted. Maybe they'll knock at least a year off the turnaround time for the next one. Or if they have a villain the general audience is well aware of, they could consider not keeping him a secret.

Seems to me that Into Darkness was geared more toward fans than 2009. See, I thought 2009 was "meh" but really loved STID. I'm an old, cranky die-hard fan. I'm not the guy they should be pleasing. There was a lot of fan service here, much more than in ST 09. Methinks they need to go back to making movies I think are "meh" and get their money back in earnest.

The next movie will probably attempt to back to 09 more adventure light hearted theme instead of the dark angle. Paramount marketing seemed more focus worldwide than domestic so they need to just find the right balance and hope 2016 summer is less busy May-June.